Edinburgh – London route shows Europe the way for modal shift
Published on 03-07-2023 at 10:04
Lumo on Lesbury Viaduct in Northumberland (@Adams_Railway - Facebook)
For business travellers eager to demonstrate their environmental credentials, there’s a shift to trains over planes. Now, with additional competition on Europe’s prestige routes, leisure travellers are looking at greener travel decisions that may be cheaper too. Research from technology specialists SilverRail shows the impact of express rail in Europe. They say increased competition on key routes is playing a leading role in helping rail increase its market share over air travel.
Corporate bean counters have been quick to notice the potential for savings on the bottom line. British company SilverRail says there is evidence that the business community is responding most. SilverRail’s campaign, Train over Plane, claims that additional express rail competition on the UK’s Edinburgh to London routes increased rail’s market share from just 35 per cent to 63 per cent, the biggest improvement for an existing service on an existing main line.
An even more dramatic shift has been recorded in Spain. Introducing a brand new service on a brand new high speed railway line helped improve the performance of the Madrid to Barcelona route jump from 12 per cent choosing rail to an unprecedented 73 per cent of all journeys being made by rail, while increasing the overall market as well.
Train over plane campaign
Increasing the number of high-speed rail routes and allowing more carriers to compete on the existing network would have a significant impact in pushing passengers to make greener, more environmentally-friendly travel choices. This is according to new research from SilverRail, a company building digital infrastructure for rail, and providing data insights for a number of passenger train operators in the UK. The company has released the details of its research on the back of the launch of the latest phase of its own
Train over Plane campaign – an initiative dedicated to helping the rail sector increase its passenger share.
Despite being a greener alternative, train travel remains the second choice for most of Europe’s passengers – with air often outcompeting rail in the three critical areas of affordability, travel time, and quality of experience. Despite the major advantages of rail – among them the city centre ‘turn up and go’ versus all the hassle of getting to airports and security checks – air travel scores well on price and core travel time. Customers often ignore the additional time and costs of reaching airports. Most importantly, low-cost airlines often have very attractive base prices, which lure in passengers.
Great Britain, greatest Spain, Italy not bad
When analysing a selection of Europe’s most prominent express railways and dedicated high speed rail routes, researchers found that those that welcomed competition to their lines, and increasing the number of carriers, enjoyed a significant uplift in passenger numbers. According to SilverRail, the primary factors diving modal shift are a combination of reduced journey times as well as the cost reductions. They say that improved customer service that results from increased competition is also proving an attractive formula for European medium to long distance travellers
Data, sourced by SilverRail from the Global Business Travel Association’s Sustainability Summit, an inaugural event held late last year in Brussels, showed that when the
Madrid – Barcelona route added high-speed rail services, the number of passengers choosing rail over air travel jumped from a meagre 12 per cent to nearly half (48 per cent). When new carriers were allowed to compete with the state carrier on the line, rail’s share of travellers rose to just under three-quarters (73 per cent). Similar gains were also seen in Italy, where the addition of high-speed rail to the route between Milan and Rome increased rail’s passenger share from 36 per cent to 58 per cent, before reaching a mammoth 80 per cent when competition was added to the route.
Absolute verified world records
In the UK, loadings on the East Coast Main Line benefitted from a timetable recast which favoured higher speed, end to end express services on the prestige London to Edinburgh rail route. Although the ECML has been progressively upgraded over the years, it is largely a nineteenth-century route, and not a purpose-built high speed line, such as the
HS2 project between London and Birmingham. Nevertheless, the line has seen many speed records set, including the verified absolute world records for steam and diesel traction. SilverRail say a combination of timetabling and competition saw an increase in passenger share, particularly in the business travel sector, from 35 per cent to 63 per cent. In 2021, new operator Lumo
joined the line along with franchised operator London North Eastern Railway (LNER).
SilverRail make a number of measurement points for their figures, basically comparing loading figures over the past four or five years and taking into account the effects of the pandemic on travel overall. It is notable that the demographic of UK passengers has shifted significantly towards leisure travel. That large – and price sensitive – market spells good news for carriers seeking to fill the back of the train, to borrow an aviation metaphor. On an environmental level, the impact could also be huge: the same shift would prevent up to 2.4 million tonnes of carbon emissions entering the earth’s atmosphere.
SilverRail estimates that if competition was added to just a handful of single-operator European lines the industry would see an average modal shift of 50 per cent, which would net the rail sector an estimated one billion euro in additional revenue. Sweet music to the ears of the rail industry, but more of a funeral march for the airlines.